Props, Kudos, and Honorable Mentions...

I was recently made aware that the work that I have been doing and more specifically, this blog was mentioned on Joshua Berman's website: The Tranquilo Traveler . Josh is the brother of my friend Todd and he was here in Sri Lanka doing work with Tea Plantation workers in the central highlands. Unfortunately, I was never able to meet up with him during his stay here. If you are interested checkout the post and enjoy the rest of his site, which is quiet interesting and beautifully laid out. Thanks for the mention Josh! Hope we can meet in Boulder or SF when I return. (Permalink to the article)

And while I thinking of it, the Berman clan seems to be quite talented. Todd is a very talented artist and I was lucky enough to check out some of his work when I was back in SF in January. You can see some of his art on his site TheArtDontStop.org Todd was in our Burningman camp in 2005 and did some fun collective art projects. On the day our camp had a party, Todd encouraged everyone to draw a small self portrait of themselves. He then cut out each of the figures and added them into a scene that he painted. It was wonderful and brought a lot of smiles to the folks that visited our camp and participated in the project.

Here is one of my favorites...

The Mission Apartments

Ok, they are not quite family yet, but my friend, and Todd's partner (soon to be legal mate by some obscurely named ceremony) Laurin Giradin has a fun culture blog called Eat Drink Protest Its a fun site with lots of good food ideas. Kathryn, I think you'd appreciate this site.

Enjoy...

Kinniya School Opening - Continued

Ok, ok I know. So many pictures for a 40 min ceremony. But come on it was pretty interesting for me rather than always working with contractors and problems, staffing issues, spreadsheets, budgets. It was a pleasant change and felt like a good bonding/team building event.

All Cesvi photo: Suranjee (Admin assistant), Pietro (Administrator), Gannon (Field Officer), Vimira (Housekeeper and maker of all yummy lunches), Nicola (Country Representative - outgoing), Me (Engineer), Giacomo (Country Representative - incoming) Kumar (Driver/Logistician), Silva (Admin Asst), Franklin (Technical Officer), Rajan (Field Officer), Swaminathan (Engineer), Temporary Driver, and Shakeel (Driver/Logistician). Absent is Marco (Project Assistant).

A few of the dancing girls - happy to have their photo taken.


Some of the fishing boats in China Bay on the way back from Kinniya (note the prestine beaches).

Kinniya School Opening

In addition to our housing project, Cesvi completed the rehabilitation of a school in a village called Kinniya, located about 30 mins southeast of Trinco town. The actual project has been completed for some time but they just now had the opening ceremony to coincide with several openings of other projects funded by the Italian government. Although I didnt provided any significant assistance to this project, it was fun to attend and it gave me some hope that one day, our housing project will be finished as well.

Ten of us piled into our van for the trip down there. It felt like the Cesvi Family road trip!


Only the youngest get to dress up like this, the older girls all wear the white shall as this is a Muslim girls school.

Some local big-wigs and the Italian Ambassador. The played the Sri Lankan national anthem as well as the Italian anthem.

The cer(E)mony consisted of a series of speeches and musical performances by the children and was only 40 mins or so, which is short for project openings. They often last about 4 hours. So I felt quite lucky.

All the children were quiet and well behaved during the ceremony, on the other hand, every male in the room continuously talked amongst themselves no matter who was speaking at the podium - including the Italian Ambassador